Welcome to the Norfolk Island Museum's blog. We are lucky to be located in the most beautiful part of a stunning island in the South Pacific. We are a little island, but our history and stories are great - from Polynesian and convict settlements to the home of the Bounty mutineers. Hopefully you'll enjoy our stories.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Last year Stephen Clarke, son of Peter, and the Museum Trust agreed to spend some of the profits from The Trial of the Fifteen play, on upgrading our museum web site. The finished product has just gone live, and we are more than thrilled with the results.

The look of the site is the handiwork of local designer Haylee Fieldes, who also updated our logo, brochure and signage last year. She has given us a fresh, up-to-date and very user friendly site. The site and all our marketing materials have been designed to ‘fit’ with the “World Of Norfolk” branding. This has already brought us great results as sales of Museum Passes and tours have increased by 7% this financial year, despite a downturn in visitor numbers. With more and more visitors researching and booking their holidays on-line it is important that we have a good web presence. Details of all our venues, tickets and tours are explained and we hope that bookings will be made before visitors even arrive on Norfolk.

A feature of the site is to highlight a number of objects in the collection. Museums around the world are making their collections available on-line and this is our first, albeit small, attempt to get some of our stories onto the web site. Over time we will put new objects up and eventually hope to include a searchable feature of our entire database. The stories of our island are told through these objects, and we hope that people researching the island through the web site will get a taste of the richness of our history and local culture.

Funding for this site was not available within our regular budget. It has only been made possible due to the generosity of the late Peter Clarke. He allowed us to perform the play The Trial of the Fifteen with no royalties paid. There is a special arrangement where the profits are to be used for projects that fall outside our regular operational costs. One of the pages on the site is a tribute to Peter Clarke appropriately thanking him for his generosity to the museum over many years. Peter’s son Stephen chose to continue with the same arrangement and we thank him for agreeing to have this project funded.

Please check out the site at: http://norfolkislandmuseum.com.au and let others know about the site as well. We welcome your feedback so please let us know what you think.